Cyberswine
Windows version
All the quality you'd expect from a title named "Cyberswine".
The Good
I found it in a bargain bin for 99 cents ($0.99), which was, indeed, a bargain.
The voice acting is surprisingly good for an interactive movie of this calibre. Half of the voice talent (including Cyberswine himself) sounded good enough for traditional movie or radio work.
The Bad
Good Lord, where do I start? There's too much to list in a narrative form, so I'll just drop down to the bullet points:
- Realtime rendered 3D is a neat concept, but not when your software engine can't even match 15fps on a 200MHz machine. (A 3D card helped immensely, to be fair.)
- While half of the voice talent was pretty good, the other half was simply terrible.
- The keyframing was really bad (ie the motion of the characters didn't look even close to normal). I guess they thought this was acceptable for a "new approach" to interactive movies, but if this were pre-rendered for a traditional IM, it would get laughed out of the business.
- Many of choices throughout the game only affected what Cyberswine would say, not do. Geez, why bother? (I guess to give the player the illusion that they are actually affecting the story...)
- You can't save multiple bookmarks, only a single one.
- It is not clearly explained what the effects of hitting "Y" or "N" are, and how they compare to adjusting Cyberswine's "emotions". It's pretty self-evident once you play the game, but the docs could have been better.
Here's the worst thing: Any "interactive movie" worth its salt allows you to come to different conclusions depending on the choices you make. I played Cyberswine passively one game (letting people live, trying to talk things out, etc.), then quite aggresively the next (shooting at anything that moves and acting quite the asshole), and I came to the same conclusion. But here's the kicker: If you don't choose anything at all, a default decision is made. I decided to start the game and then just sit back, letting the computer take the default path, and I came to the same conclusion. So, it appears that any choices you make don't affect the outcome at all. What a crock.
To top it off, I didn't see any credits for the voice talent, which is the only thing worth crediting in this game.
The Bottom Line
Playing Cyberswine is like watching an automobile accident--it's disgusting and offensive, but you can't seem to tear yourself away from the carnage.
by Trixter (8947) on August 16th, 1999